Month: August 2007

Norm!

by digby

I read this piece by Rudy Giuliani in Foreign Affairs yesterday and was struck by the fact that the Republicans really are prepared to nominate someone who is just as ignorant, incompetent and bloodthirsty as George W. Bush.

I know this is actually a campaign document is, therefore, aimed at Cro-Magnon ditto heads, and doesn’t necessariy reflect what he would really do, but then — we’ve heard that kind of rationalization before, haven’t we? After what we’ve seen, it wouldn’t be very smart to assume he isn’t exactly as fascistic and neoconish as he appears to be. Worse, actually.

What is most striking about his piece is how he cuddles up to Bush’s legacy This bit is right up there with the bizarre, oft repeated, trope that after 9/11 we found out that “the oceans don’t protect us anymore:”

The defining challenges of the twentieth century ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Full recognition of the first great challenge of the twenty-first century came with the attacks of September 11, 2001, even though Islamist terrorists had begun their assault on world order decades before. Confronted with an act of war on American soil, our old assumptions about conflict between nation-states fell away. Civilization itself, and the international system, had come under attack by a ruthless and radical Islamist enemy.

Stirring neocon gibberish, but gibberish nonetheless. (Our old assumptions about nation states fell away? Really?) But it isn’t really Bushian at all. In fact, it is very similar to neocon gibberish we’ve seen before from Giuliani advisor Norman Podhoretz who famously wrote this:

[W]e are up against a truly malignant force in radical Islamism and in the states breeding, sheltering, or financing its terrorist armory. This new enemy has already attacked us on our own soil—a feat neither Nazi Germany nor Soviet Russia ever managed to pull off—and openly announces his intention to hit us again, only this time with weapons of infinitely greater and deadlier power than those used on 9/11. His objective is not merely to murder as many of us as possible and to conquer our land. Like the Nazis and Communists before him, he is dedicated to the destruction of everything good for which America stands. It is this, then, that (to paraphrase George W. Bush and a long string of his predecessors, Republican and Democratic alike) we in our turn, no less than the “greatest generation” of the 1940’s and its spiritual progeny of the 1950’s and after, have a responsibility to uphold and are privileged to defend.

Easy for him to say. He’s ancient.

Like his neocon advisors, Giuliani purports to love the constitution and hold American ideals about democracy:

Achieving a realistic peace means balancing realism and idealism in our foreign policy. America is a nation that loves peace and hates war. At the core of all Americans is the belief that all human beings have certain inalienable rights that proceed from God but must be protected by the state. Americans believe that to the extent that nations recognize these rights within their own laws and customs, peace with them is achievable. To the extent that they do not, violence and disorder are much more likely. Preserving and extending American ideals must remain the goal of all U.S. policy, foreign and domestic. But unless we pursue our idealistic goals through realistic means, peace will not be achieved.

Idealism should define our ultimate goals; realism must help us recognize the road we must travel to achieve them. The world is a dangerous place. We cannot afford to indulge any illusions about the enemies we face. The Terrorists’ War on Us was encouraged by unrealistic and inconsistent actions taken in response to terrorist attacks in the past. A realistic peace can only be achieved through strength.

You can’t make an cakewalk without breaking a few huevos. Freedom is terrific as long as you fully understand what freedom is:

We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for 30 or 40 or 50 years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don’t see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.”

Or as Podhoretz believes:

For somebody who declares democracy to be his goal, he [Podhoretz] is remarkably blasé about the fact that 80 percent of Iraqis want U.S. troops to leave their country, according to the latest polls. “I don’t much care,” he says, batting the question away.

Rudy defines the enemy:

The first step toward a realistic peace is to be realistic about our enemies. They follow a violent ideology: radical Islamic fascism, which uses the mask of religion to further totalitarian goals and aims to destroy the existing international system. These enemies wear no uniform. They have no traditional military assets. They rule no states but can hide and operate in virtually any of them and are supported by some.

Above all, we must understand that our enemies are emboldened by signs of weakness. Radical Islamic terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in 1993, the Khobar Towers facility in Saudi Arabia in 1996, our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the U.S.S. Cole in 2000. In some instances, we responded inadequately. In others, we failed to respond at all. Our retreat from Lebanon in 1983 and from Somalia in 1993 convinced them that our will was weak.

That’s the Podster again, right outa WWIV. And let’s put it this way — Americans have been a bunch of lily-livered wimps for a long, long time. Norm continues:

The record speaks dismally for itself. From 1970 to 1975, several American diplomats were murdered in Sudan and Lebanon … in 1979, with Carter now in the White House, Iranian students … broke into the American embassy in Tehran and seized 52 Americans as hostages… In April 1983, Hizbullah—an Islamic terrorist organization nourished by Iran and Syria—sent a suicide bomber to explode his truck in front of the American embassy…Six months later, in October 1983, another Hizbullah suicide bomber blew up an American barracks in the Beirut airport…Having cut and run in Lebanon in October, Reagan again remained passive in December, when the American embassy in Kuwait was bombed…In September 1984…In December 1984… In October 1985…In December 1985.. December 1988 …January 1989, Reagan was succeeded by the elder George Bush, who, in handling the fallout from the destruction of Pan Am 103, was content to adopt the approach to terrorism taken by all his predecessors…In January 1993, Bill Clinton became President…several spectacular terrorist operations occurred on Clinton’s watch of which the U.S. was most emphatically the target…

Oh my God what a bunch of leuseurs! (Especially Ronnie Reagan. Who knew the Commie slayer was such a big sissy?)

And on and on it goes. According to Podhoretz, Rudy’s top foreign policy advisor, every single one of those things going all the way back to 1970 should have been met with a military attack if not an invasion because only then would those terrorists have realized that they were dealing with MEN, not mice, and would never have declared a War on Us.

According to this thesis, we have been fighting WWIV for 37 years, overlapping with WWIII by about 20. And WWIV is far from over. in fact, we might even be fighting WWV and WWVI right now, and not even know it.

Rudy warns us that we must not retreat as we did in Vietnam (when he was busy, btw)

America must remember one of the lessons of the Vietnam War. Then, as now, we fought a war with the wrong strategy for several years. And then, as now, we corrected course and began to show real progress. Many historians today believe that by about 1972 we and our South Vietnamese partners had succeeded in defeating the Vietcong insurgency and in setting South Vietnam on a path to political self-sufficiency. But America then withdrew its support, allowing the communist North to conquer the South. The consequences were dire, and not only in Vietnam: numerous deaths in places such as the killing fields of Cambodia, a newly energized and expansionist Soviet Union, and a weaker America.

Rudy should check with someone other than ole Norm before he makes his next speech. He got into trouble with this, now he’s saying that we were “winning” in 1972. He’s very confused. But as I said, he was busy during this time and may not have known what actually happened.

He goes on to say that he wants to expand the military by tens of thousands, accelerate missile defense spending, create all kinds of neato-laser-super-duper modern weaponry that’ll make everybody on the planet go “aaah” and basically militarize the entire country in the Terrorists War on Us. (It’s twu!)

Diplomacy is going to be reformed to mean cheerleading for Team USA and nothing else and we are going to kick ass if other countries don’t stop being so anti-American.

And here’s Rudy channeling Norm again:

A primary goal for our diplomacy — whether directed toward great powers, developing states, or international institutions — must be to strengthen the international system, which most of the world has a direct interest in seeing function well. After all, the system helps keep the peace and provide prosperity. Some theorists say that it is outmoded and display either too much faith in globalization or assume that the age of the sovereign state is coming to a close. These views are naive. There is no realistic alternative to the sovereign state system. Transnational terrorists and other rogue actors have difficulty operating where the state system is strong, and they flourish where it is weak. This is the reason they try to exploit its weaknesses.

Right, but they’re not talking about your Daddy’s international institutions. Podhoretz:

With the victorious conclusion of World War III in 1989-90, the old international order became obsolete, and new arrangements tailored to a new era would have to be forged. But more than a decade elapsed before 9/11 finally made the contours of the “post-cold-war era” clear enough for these new arrangements to begin being developed.

Looked at from this angle, the Bush Doctrine revealed itself as an extremely bold effort to break out of the institutional framework and the strategy constructed to fight the last war. But it was more: it also drew up a blueprint for a new structure and a new strategy to fight a different breed of enemy in a war that was just starting and that showed signs of stretching out into the future as far as the eye could see. Facing the realities of what now confronted us, Bush had come to the conclusion that few if any of the old instrumentalities were capable of defeating this new breed of enemy, and that the strategies of the past were equally helpless before this enemy’s way of waging war. To move into the future meant to substitute preemption for deterrence, and to rely on American military might rather than the “soft power” represented by the UN and the other relics of World War III.

Or as Rudy said: “History has shown that institutions work best when the United States leads them. Yet we cannot take for granted that they will work forever and must be prepared to look to other tools.”

There’s more. He proposes an imperial occupation force:

A hybrid military-civilian organization — a Stabilization and Reconstruction Corps staffed by specially trained military and civilian reservists — must be developed. The agency would undertake tasks such as building roads, sewers, and schools; advising on legal reform; and restoring local currencies.

Apparently, he thinks there’s going to be a lot of nation building. Good to know.

And here’s the big rave up ending:

The 9/11 generation has learned from the history of the twentieth century that America must not turn a blind eye to gathering storms. We must base our trust on the actions, rather than the words, of others. And we must be on guard against overpromising and underdelivering. Above all, we have learned that evil must be confronted — not appeased — because only principled strength can lead to a realistic peace.

Whatever.

Cheney may have been a neocon psychopath, but Rudy is his equal. Ole Norm probably likes him much better if only for the fact that he’s so much more flamboyant about it. He lets his imperialist freak flag fly like no major candidate in eons.

All the Republicans in the race are horrible. But Rudy appears to be the most aggressively dumb about foreign policy (although it’s a close thing…) and is totally seduced by the starry eyed neocon con. I don’t know if it’s because he thinks it’s the only way he can distract the rubes from his past positions and ugly family life, but whether it’s political expediency or true affinity doesn’t matter. Rudy Giuliani is, mentally deranged and he cannot be let anywhere near real power. Ever.

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More On The Heathens

by digby

Following up on my post of yesterday about the ridiculous Matthews and Duffy discussion about the Democratic heathens, I see that Lance Mannion unpacked their foolishness in much more detailed fashion than I did.

This observation is particularly smart — and important:

The Right Wing capture of the evangelical churches and a mass movement of Catholic voters into the Republican column, both of which occurred almost 30 years ago now and neither of which were much due to, as Duffy seems to think, Democrats making fun of Jerry Falwell.

Both movements were limited in their impact too, in ways that have now turned out to be no longer particularly helpful to the Republicans.

The evangelical vote was mostly Southern and Midwestern and rural. The Catholics voted for Republicans, all right, but only Republican Presidential candidates. Otherwise, in the Northeast and the Rust Belt, where they were concentrated, they kept sending Democrats to the Congress and the Senate. There was a reason they were known as Reagan Democrats.

Reagan Democrats were not moved so much by their religious beliefs as by a reaction to trends of the 60s and 70s, one of which included Roe vs. Wade. Their motivations were also economic—times were tough and Jimmy Carter didn’t seem to be helping or have a clue how to—and “patriotic”—they hated the anti-war movement which they confused with the counterculture in general; they accepted the cant that Democrats were soft, not just on defense, but on crime, drugs, and bad behavior by uppity women, uppity black people, uppity college kids, and uppity gays.

In short, Reagan Democrats were reactionaries, angrily at odds with the times. But times always change, and with them so do people’s attitudes. Reagan Democrats have been disappearing from the political landscape since the middle of Reagan’s second term. Many have died, many have gotten used to the changes they used to hate and fear, and many have just come to realize that, mad as they were at the “Liberals,” the Republicans are not on their side, economically, culturally, or even spiritually—the Religious Right is anti-Catholic, after all.

Meanwhile, the evangelicals have allowed themselves to be used as tools for the Republicans’ Southern Strategy, which has always been racist not religious. Piety is just the mask for the the racial animus of a great many white male voters.

The racism that has undergirded Republican victories for the last four decades has never figured in Beltway Insiders’ analysis of the political scene. Republican Presidential candidates make the pilgrimage to Bob Jones University every four years because they like the food in the dorm cafeterias.

To the degree that the evangelical vote has been actually a vote of religious conviction, it has been an anti-abortion, anti-evolution, anti-gay, anti-feminist vote.

How Democrats are supposed to win that vote, or why they’d want to, just by talking more about God and Jay-sus, I don’t know.

I know why Beltway Insider types think they should try. But I’m getting to that.

The Democrats’ loss of these “religious” voters hurt them most in 1980, 1984, and 1988. Since then, as I said, Reagan Democrats have been disappearing and the evangelical vote, because it has been mainly a Southern and Midwestern vote, helped the Republicans control Congress when the nation’s demographic upheavels temporarily favored the Southern wing of the Sun Belt, but it’s not won them the Presidency on its own ever, and as the Reagan Democrats have left the ranks, certainly hasn’t won them any Presidencies since the first George Bush. The Insider Media can only make the case that it has by ignoring the fact that the Republican candidate has lost three of the last four elections, came very close to losing the fourth and probably only didn’t because Karl Rove stole votes.

This is why I say that in their minds Ronald Reagan is still President; at least, he might as well still be—the history of the country since 1985, and particularly the history of the last 15 years, doesn’t figure in their thinking at all!

But Duffy’s blockheaded remarks are based not just on willful amnesia but also upon assumptions that are elitist, unconsciously anti-religious, and, basically, racist.

Republican propaganda on religion has been very successful; a new consulting industry has even grown up to promote these erroneous and self-defeating themes in liberal circles. But the real problem is that the press dishonestly uses this nonsense to pretend to the public that they aren’t the very elites they are slamming. There are indeed some average secular people who do not mingle with or understand the concerns of average religious people — and among them are these two lazy insiders who are clearly so far removed from the salt of the earth, regular Joes they deign to speak for that they might as well be Barry Diller and Diane Von Furstenberg. (You pick which is which.)

Lance has much more to say on this, all of it interesting.

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Minimizing External Influences

by digby

I have been working on a long post about the Jose Padilla trial, but now that the verdict is about to come in, I’ll just highlight a couple of links.

The first is the Firedoglake coverage by veteran newsman Lew Koch. He has been at the trial since the beginning and it is quite a story.

The other link is to this post by Marty Lederman at Balkinization last week-end. At this moment, I don’t know if Padilla will be found guilty, but I do know that this is so shocking that I can’t see how he was even put on trial. Our system of law has been severely weakened by this.

[T]here is no more important public government document in this whole scandal than the Declaration filed in the Padilla case by Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The Lowell Declaration explains, quite forthrightly, that the DIA’s “approach to interrogation” is “largely dependent upon creating an atmosphere of dependency and trust” between the subject and the interrogator:

Developing the kind of relationship of trust and dependency necessary for effective interrogations is a process that can take a significant amount of time. There are numerous examples of situations where interrogators have been unable to obtain valuable intelligence from a subject until months, or even years, after the interrogation process began.

Anything that threatens the perceived dependency and trust between the subject and interrogator directly threatens the value of interrogation as an intelligence-gathering tool. Even seemingly minor interruptions can have profound psychological impacts on the delicate subject-interrogator relationship. Any insertion of counsel into the subject-interrogator relationship, for example — even if only for a limited duration or for a specific purpose — can undo months of work and may permanently shut down the interrogation process. Therefore, it is critical to minimize external influences on the interrogation process.

The adjective “Orwellian” is overused these days. But if anything is eligible for that appellation, it must be the Administration’s repeated mantra that its detention and interrogation regime is designed to establish a relationship of “trust and dependency.” That is, quite literally, right out of 1984. [UPDATE: Just to clarify what I hope was obvious: It is not the fact that the interrogators are trying to establish a relationship of trust and dependence that is so shocking — of course that is a standard objective of many interrogations. What is jaw-dropping and Orwellian is that they apply that benign label to the system of dehumanization and legal black holes so well described in Jane Mayer’s article; in the Christian Science Monitor story; in the photos we have seen of Padilla’s detention; and, indeed, to the description in the Jacoby Declaration itself.]

Contrary to Jack’s suggestion below, then, the Administration did not try to defend Padilla’s indefinite, isolated detention — and the denial of an attorney and of any judicial oversight — on the ground that “the President thought that Padilla was a dangerous man.” If dangerousness had been the issue, the Administration could have simply kept Padilla detained in the ordinary criminal justice system, where he had been. As Jacoby explains, the reason Padilla was moved to indefinite military detention resembling (as Jack notes) classical authoritarian models, was not dangerousness, but instead the Administration’s desire to break him in order to obtain possible actionable information about al Qaeda training, planning, recruitment, methods and operations.

The most remarkable thing about the Jacoby Declaration, in my view, is not even its casual and horrific use of euphemism, but rather that it is a public document — indeed, a document created in order to be submitted to courts in order to persuade them that such detention is lawful and, most importantly, that it is critical to place such detentions entirely outside ordinary legal process, to a netherworld without lawyers and judges (indeed, without any contact with persons outside the “relationship” of “trust and dependency”). Jacoby again:

Permitting Padilla any access to counsel may substantially harm our national security interests. As with most detainees, Padilla is unlikely to cooperate if he believes that an attorney will intercede in his detention. DIA’s assessment is that Padilla is even more inclined to resist interrogation than most detainees. DIA is aware that Padilla has had extensive experience in the United States criminal justice system and had access to counsel when he was being held as a material witness. These experiences have likely heightened his expectations that counsel will assist him in the interrogation process. Only after such as Padilla has perceived that help is not on the way can the United States reasonably expect to obtain all possible intelligence information from Padilla.

Because Padilla is likely more attuned to the possibility of counsel intervention than most detainees, I believe that any potential sign of counsel involvement would disrupt our ability to gather intelligence from Padilla. Padilla has been detained without access to counsel for seven months — since the [Department of Defense] took control of him on 9 June 2002. Providing him access to counsel now would create expectations by Padilla that his ultimate release may be obtained through an adversarial civil litigation process. This would break — probably irreparably – the sense of dependency and trust that the interrogators are attempting to create.

At a minimum, Padilla might delay providing information until he believes that his judicial avenues have been exhausted. Given the nature of his case, his prior experience in the criminal justice system, and the length of that has already elapsed since his detention, Padilla might reasonably expect that his judicial avenues of relief may not be exhausted for many months or years. Moreover, Padilla might harbor the belief that his counsel would be available to assist him at any point and that seven months is not an unprecedented for him to be without access to counsel.

Any such delay in Padilla’s case risks that plans for future attacks will go undetected during that period, and that whatever information Padilla may eventually provide will be outdated and more difficult to corroborate.

In other words, legal process must be entirely denied Padilla so that he will come to think that all hope is lost — that he is in a world without law or due process. As long as he even thinks that he is subject to the Constitution and laws of the United States, the “relationship” of “trust and dependency” is broken.

I, for one, found this chilling when I first saw it. Moreover, I was fairly shocked that the government was being so candid — indeed, that the government decided to invoke this rationale affirmatively, in court submissions, as a justification not only for the indefinite, secret detention of citizens such as Padilla and Yasser Hamdi, but as part of an argument to the courts that attorneys and courts must be entirely excluded from this detention regime — because lawyers, judges and due process are, after all, and in Jacoby’s words, “external influences on the interrogation process.”

It’s hard to still be shocked by what these people have done to our system of law and moral authority, but I think I am still capable of being shocked by their rather casual attitude about it. They actually put it on the record that they set out to destroy this man’s mind.

Keep in mind that if Padilla is found guilty it will be for some bizarre circumstantial charges about conspiring to create global jihad, not for trying to blow up any buildings. He wasn’t even charged with that — we don’t know if it was because the evidence they had was obtained through torture and wasn’t admissible or because they needed to keep their torture scheme secret or because the evidence was bullshit to begin with. I suspect it was a combination of all three. But it’s not the way American justice is supposed to work any way you look at it.

Update: Guilty on all counts. I just heard Jonathan Turley say on CNN that this case is really about the appeals process and I think that’s probably right. The government was backed into a corner by the Supreme Court and brought this “Al Capone cheating on his taxes” case because it was the only thing they could do unless they were willing to expose their methods. The appellate courts are going to get into the larger legal issues of his detention.

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Down The Rabbit Hole Head First

by digby

Wired blogs Threat Level, live blogged today’s 9th Circuit hearing on the NSA’s spying. It’s like watching that old “who’s on first” routine:

Expanding on that theme, the government argues that the Al-Haramain case needs to be thrown out because the secret document that the government accidentally gave the foundation is so secret that it is outside of the case.

Bondy claims the plaintiff’s memories of the document can’t be allowed into the case because the only way to test them is against the “totally classified” document.

“Once the document is out of the case, which it has to be since it is privileged, the only way to test the veracity of their recollections is to compare it to the document,” Bondy says.

Hawkins_michael_daly The lower court allowed the case to go forward based on the Al-Haramain Foundation lawyers’ memories of the document, but ruled that the document itself was not allowed into the case.

Judge Hawkins (left, file photo) wonders if the document is really that secret?

“Every ampersand, every comma is Top Secret?,” Hawkins asks.

“This document is totally non-redactable and non-segregable and cannot even be meaningfully described,” Bondy answers.

The government says the purported log of calls between one of the Islamic charity directors and two American lawyers is classified Top Secret and has the SCI level, meaning that it is “secureCheshire compartmented information.” That designation usually applies to surveillance information.

4:25pm PDT

Judge McKeown: “I feel like I’m in Alice and Wonderland.”

Eisenberg: “I feel like I’m in Alice in Wonderland, too.”

Read the whole thing. It is the epitome of Bushian logic. I’m not sure the legal system is even capable of handling it. It’s Alice meets 1984.

Update: The Washington Post has the story in today’s paper:

The bottom line here is the government declares something is a state secret, that’s the end of it. No cases. . . . The king can do no wrong,” said Judge Harry Pregerson, one of three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit who grilled administration lawyers at length over whether a pair of lawsuits against the government should go forward.

Deputy Solicitor General Gregory G. Garre was forced to mount a public argument that almost nothing about the substance of the government’s conduct could be talked about in court because doing so might expose either the methods used in gathering intelligence or gaps in those methods.

“This seems to put us in the ‘trust us’ category,” Judge M. Margaret McKeown said about the government’s assertions that its surveillance activities did not violate the law. ” ‘We don’t do it. Trust us. And don’t ask us about it.’ “

At one point, Garre argued that courts are not the right forum for complaints about government surveillance, and that “other avenues” are available. “What is that? Impeachment?” Pregerson shot back

That judge sounds mad as a hatter.

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Babbling Braindead Robots

by digby

Your liberal media:

MATTHEWS: Well, under the “equal whack for both parties” rule of this show, let’s go to the Democrats. Joe Biden, who tends to be very honest — whatever you think of him as the next president, although I think he’s a fine guy — he very clearly said the other day, yesterday, that the people like Al Gore and John Kerry, the last two Democratic candidates for president, said — created an image that they were somehow — we’re looking at it right now — that if they were — as he put it, when they’re sitting next to the pew, that maybe he really doesn’t respect your view. In other words, they’re not really religious people. They don’t share your evangelical views and your deeply religious views. They’re too secular.

DUFFY: Yeah. Well, I think, for the last 25 years, Democrats have done everything they can to alienate religious voters, faith-minded voters, and the —

MATTHEWS: Not a smart move politically.

DUFFY: Oh, no. And it seemed to be part of the program. They did it to woo a secular left that they thought didn’t want to have anything to do with that.

MATTHEWS: Was turned off by the religious people, yeah.

DUFFY: Starting with Jimmy Carter and the —

MATTHEWS: I hear it. I’ve heard —

DUFFY: Yeah.

MATTHEWS: — years of people —

DUFFY: Right. Absolutely.

MATTHEWS: — making fun of Jimmy — [the Rev.] Jerry Falwell and people like that, but you knew it was a broader brush than that.

DUFFY: Of course.

MATTHEWS: They were really making fun of the people in the churches, in the tents, in the megachurches.

DUFFY: Right. It was a really stupid thing to do — and they have begun to realize that.

MATTHEWS: Elitism doesn’t really work in politics, does it?

Yes, it’s just awful how the liberals have spent the last 25 years laughing at the Real Americans isn’t it? Big mistake. We’ve been so rude. I’m ashamed of myself.

This is the way decent people conduct political discourse:

Liberals become indignant when you question their patriotism, but simultaneously work overtime to give terrorists a cushion for the next attack and laugh at dumb Americans who love their country and hate the enemy.

This is a winner too:

Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America’s self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant.

As for the left wing heathens who spend all their time laughing at people who pray, may I quote from Bill Clinton’s inaugural address?

And so, my fellow Americans, at the edge of the 21st century, let us begin with energy and hope, with faith and discipline, and let us work until our work is done. The scripture says, “And let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due season, we shall reap, if we faint not.”

From this joyful mountaintop of celebration, we hear a call to service in the valley. We have heard the trumpets. We have changed the guard. And now, each in our way, and with God’s help, we must answer the call.

Thank you and God bless you all.

That Christian bashing bastard. Of course, he’s not really religious. Neither is his phony wife —- according to Cal Thomas Methodists aren’t real Christians. Obama too, is suspect. In fact, it seems that unless you are a Republican your religion just doesn’t count.

One of the things that is so incredibly irritating about Matthews’ and Duffy’s lazy, braindead trope is that it is so disrespectful to the millions and millions of religious Americans who vote for Democrats. And it makes a truly egregious assumption that there is only one way that people can be religious, and that is by being an evangelical Christian (or maybe a Catholic.)

I’m not a religious person, but I was raised in the church and it was a cultural norm that we didn’t make a big deal out of it. I don’t think it was particularly theological, it was just the way we were. You didn’t wear your religion on your sleeve. We were uptight Episcopalians. But, you know, that isn’t a crime. It’s as legitimate to keep your religious feelings and beliefs private as it is to talk about them publicly.

Furthermore, the most solid part of the Democratic base are African Americans who share much of the same religious tradition as the Southern baptists like Jerry Falwell. Are they idiots who are voting for people who hate them?

That nasty little conversation reveals a lot more about the “savvy” DC insider elitism than it does about politics of the last 25 years. Like Michael Duffy and Chris Matthews know fuck-all about the “regular folks” in the pews. Matthews has grown old among the DC congnoscenti selling some outmoded blue collar Irish identity that hasn’t been relevant since the 70’s. Duffy is clearly on his way to the same thing.

Honestly, are any of these people capable of an original thought. Ever?

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Newt Zoot Boogie

by digby

There’s a lot of talk about Karl Rove’s influence on the Republican party this week, for obvious reasons, but aside from his striking ability to get addled playboys elected to high office, he really wasn’t much of a mastermind.

This guy, however, actually helped create a whole school of wingnut philosophy, although like most Republicans had a trouble with execution and seriously blew his dismount. Pach at FDL has the latest on Newtie’s most recent musings:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Tuesday he is “sickened” that President Bush and Congress went on vacation “while young Americans in our cities are massacred” by illegal immigrants.

Gingrich, who is considering a run for the White House, was referring to a recent crime in Newark, N.J., where three college students were murdered execution style in a school playground.

One of the suspects — Jose Lachira Carranza — is an illegal immigrant from Peru who was on bail on charges of raping a child when the murders occurred.

[…]

Gingrich said that the “war here at home” against illegal immigrants is “even more deadly than the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

That’s vintage Newtie. Whenever there’s violence he’s right there exploiting it. it’s one of his specialties. You’ll recall that back when he was leading the charge against “sick liberals” he used to say stuff like this, in response to the Columbine massacre. Via Steve Benen:

“I want to say to the elite of this country – the elite news media, the liberal academic elite, the liberal political elite: I accuse you in Littleton…of being afraid to talk about the mess you have made,” Gingrich said, “and being afraid to take responsibility for things you have done, and instead foisting upon the rest of us pathetic banalities because you don’t have the courage to look at the world you have created.”

After Virginia Tech, there was this:

GINGRICH: Yes, I think the fact is, if you look at the amount of violence we have in games that young people play at 7, 8, 10, 12, 15 years of age, if you look at the dehumanization, if you look at the fact that we refuse to say that we are, in fact, endowed by our creator, that our rights come from God, that if you kill somebody, you’re committing an act of evil.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But what does that have to do with liberalism?

GINGRICH:“Well, who has created a situation ethics, essentially, zone of not being willing to talk about any of these things. Let me carry another example. I strongly supported Imus being dismissed, but I also think the very thing he was dismissed for, which is the use of language which is stunningly degrading of women — the fact, for example, that one of the Halloween costumes this last year was being able to be either a prostitute or a pimp at 10, 11, 12 years of age, buying a costume, and we don’t have any discussion about what’s happened to our culture because while we’re restricting political free speech under McCain-Feingold, we say it’s impossible to restrict vulgar and vicious and anti-human speech. And I would argue that that’s a major component of what’s happened to our culture in the last 40 years.”

Clearly, Newtie is starting to lose the thread on that one. So, how lucky for him that he can combine his usual scapegoating with some real red meat for the racist base with this latest broadside in the war against “the other.”

Pach writes:

Maybe this will be part of Newt’s grand strategy to campaign on withdrawal from Iraq: bring the troops home to fight the insurgent immigrant menace at home. The rationalizations will no doubt be entertaining from the wingnut base, MalKKKin’s place and LGF as they attempt justify such Dhimmitude when anihilation at the hands of the Islamofascist horde has been their raison d’etre for six years now. Perhaps we’ll see a fracture in that fragile alliance between the hawkish Israel faction and those whose commitment to fighting global jihad is slightly less keen than their desire to keep from soiling their beautiful minds with the sound of espanol at the local Circuit City.

That’s actually not as far-fetched a scenario as it sounds. The Islamofascist boogeyman is just not very satisfying. They’re hard to find in America and everybody’s so damned touchy about it that you’re not allowed to seek em out and beat the shit out of them without it becoming an international incident. Beating up Mexicans, now that’s an old American sport for the whole family to enjoy.

There is a very memorable precedent for turning on despised local minorities during wartime. In fact, right here in LA there was a very famous incident during WWII:

The riots began in the racially charged atmosphere of Los Angeles, amidst a period of rising gang violence perpetrated by zoot suiters. In October 1942, zoot suiters were charged with killing Jose Diaz in a supposed gang brawl at the Sleepy Lagoon reservoir (leading to a now-infamous court trial whose convictions were later overturned), in May they rioted against police shutting down an illegal gambling operation, sailors claim that zoot suiters stabbed a sailor.[1] Sensationalized accounts of criminal zoot suiters (pachucos) menacing local citizens were featured on the front pages of many newspapers. On May 31st, 1943, a group of sailors on leave confronted a gang of zoot suiters; one sailor, Joe Dacy Coleman, was badly injured. In response, fifty sailors gathered and headed out to downtown and East Los Angeles, which was the center of the Mexican community. Once there, they attacked all the men they found wearing zoot suits, often ripping off the suits and burning them in the streets. They also raped pachuca women in the process. In many instances, the police intervened by arresting Mexican-American youths for disturbing the peace, leaving the sailors to the military justice system. African Americans and Filipino Americans suffered the same fate as Mexican Americans. [2] Several hundred pachucos and nine sailors were arrested as a result of the fighting that occurred over the next few days.

Of the nine sailors that were arrested, eight were released with no charges and one had to pay a small fine. Military authorities intervened on June 7, by declaring that Los Angeles would henceforth be off-limits to all military personnel.

(I guess this public stripping thing is some sort of male dominance ritual that goes down through the ages. Very kinky.)

This PBS film on the Zoot Suit Riots is a real eye-opener. Back in that day, the Mexican-Americans had been shoved into barrios and kept to themselves. But their kids were rebelling. They spoke English. They left the barrios and adopted all kinds of American customs. The locals didn’t like their attitude.

Today the problem is that they “refuse to assimilate.” It’s always something, isn’t it?

Pach notes that Newtie isn’t the only one. We all know that the racist GOP base is beside itself over the Mexican hordes. (I wouldn’t be surprised if Mitt’s promise to “double Gitmo” has something to do with the fact that they conveniently speak Spanish down there in Cuba.) As Pach writes:

To the surprise of no one with a functional attention span (which of course excludes any of our Very Serious Political Pundits), the decades-old pancake makeup covering the hateful racist core of the GOP has flaked so hard it’s falling right off, and we’re about to witness quite the Klan rally for the soul of the Republican Party heading into 2008.

Jackboots de rigeur.

Yes indeed. Dave Neiwert wryly points out:

As for the current rise in violence against Latinos, well, I’m sure that Gingrich would assure us it has nothing to do with rhetoric declaring “war” against them.

Of course not. They deserve it.

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Surging To The Handoff

by digby

Der Spiegel has a long and pretty glowing report this week about progress in Iraq by a journalist who claims he wasn’t on a dog and pony show by the military as O’Hanlon and Pollack were. This reporter is nearly giddy at what he sees as a great, impending success if only the Americans don’t withdraw. The story could have been written by Dick Cheney, replete as it is with absolutes like “there is no doubt that the greatest threats to success are Iran and Syria” and the like.

The report does concede that some of the successes may be ephemeral and that “political challenges” remain, but overall, this piece presents a very optimistic view — as long as the Americans don’t lose their nerve. To make that point, the reporter apparently had long, leisurely discussions with General Petreus and Ambassador Crocker. The latter’s comments I found particularly interesting:

Crocker defends Maliki’s government, at least on the surface. A seasoned diplomat, he brings his point across with rhetorical questions: “Is Maliki personally at fault? Or is it his government? Or is it simply the unbelievably difficult circumstances under which people are working here?”

He then argues for more patience, saying: “We had the most brutal of Baath regimes here for 35 years, and now we have a few years of turmoil. It isn’t really all that much.” But what about Maliki? Can he lead the country to success? Crocker doesn’t like these kinds of questions, but he is constantly called upon to answer them. He says: “Even a more talented politician than Maliki would have big problems under these circumstances.”

However complicated it may be, Crocker has to keep the big picture in mind. It consists of the diagrams and charts General Petraeus uses and a map of the Middle East covered with arrows and shaded areas — the big plan. The situation is such that Iraq’s problems are not just Iraqi problems.

There is no doubt that the greatest enemies of success in Iraq are in Tehran and Damascus. Many of the jihadists enter the country through Syria, and Iran supports the terrorists with weapons and money. During their operations, US troops often find brand-new mines and grenades produced in Iranian weapons factories, sometime still in their original packaging. Fighters from the Iranian Al-Quds Brigades are active on Iraqi soil, and there are terrorist training camps across the border in Iran. “Iran,” says Crocker, “wants to defeat the West on more than one front, and it also wants to make sure that Iraq will never pose a threat to it again.”

The ambassador has already taken part in three-way talks involving Iranian, Iraqi and American delegates, and the next round is about to begin. At these meetings, Crocker says, it is obvious that Maliki, though a Shiite, is truly not in Iran’s pocket. “The atmosphere at these meetings is frosty,” he explains, “I mean, really frosty.” But how do the Iranians explain their activities? “They don’t explain them. It’s very frustrating. There is a sort of total denial of reality on that issue.”

Petraeus will not be the only one presenting his view of the situation in Iraq to Congress this September. Crocker, too, will be called to account before the representatives of the American people. He knows that there will be tremendous pressure, and he is fully aware that everyone is hoping for a speedy withdrawal. But, he says, “I’m not going to be there to deliver some sort of agenda. I’ll be there to describe reality.”

According to Crocker’s reality, Iraq’s politicians will need another two to three years to complete important tasks. To do so they will require the presence of the US military. “Of course the surge can’t go on forever,” says Crocker, “and of course Iraq will have to participate in the costs of this operation at some point. But one thing is certain: We all need more time.”

So there you have it. FU and pass the ammunition. But notice all the propaganda points that have either been thoroughly debunked or seriously challenged all in one neat package: Tehran-Damascus-Iranian weapons-al-Quds brigades-foreign fighters-Iranian terrorist training camps. Bravo. Lots of fear mongering about the very suspicious charge that Iran is supplying weapons to kill Americans and no mention that we know for a fact that American weapons actually are being used to kill Americans, thanks to General Petreus.

Crocker continued with his friendly interlocutors:

When asked about critics of the war in the United States who are demanding an immediate withdrawal of US troops or a pull out by next April, Crocker can only shake his head in quiet disgust. Aside from the fact that the withdrawal of such a large combat force would take at least a year, logistically speaking, everything about these sorts of demands is unrealistic, he says.

“We Americans consider ourselves to be a moral nation, no matter how the rest of world might feel about it,” says Crocker. It is clear, from his expression, that what he says next is very important to him. “How will we feel if the movie doesn’t stop, even though we’ve pressed the ‘stop’ button? What if the movie just goes on? And gets even uglier? And even uglier after that?” Crocker makes a dramatic pause, clearly already practicing his best sentences for his appearance in Washington. “We’re talking here about the possibility of thousands of deaths, about religious cleansing operations, we’re talking here about the possibility that there could be no Sunnis left in Baghdad because they’ll all have been murdered, driven out or expelled. Is this what we want? And who will explain that to Americans?”

I can tell you how I will feel. I will feel horrible, ashamed and aghast if the worst scenario happens. But then I already do. After all, the potential repercussions of leaving can certainly be no more morally wrong than invading and causing this situation in the first place! Hundreds of thousands are already dead.

The moral failure was in invading Iraq. It was the original sin from which all these horrors have sprung. To even imply that the majority of Americans who now want to rectify that terrible decision by removing ourselves from the situation will be morally responsible for this mess is an outrage.

I love these lectures and feelings of “disgust” coming from people who apparently still maintain that it was perfectly fine to ignore international law and invade a country for no good reason and turn it into a chaotic hellhole. No moral culpability required for that, no admission of guilt, but lots and lots of sanctimonious posturing about how we will have blood on our hands if the US admits its mistake and withdraws. The obtuseness of that position takes my breath away. We already have so much blood on our hands that it’s dripping into everything we touch.

I can’t tell the future. I don’t know what will happen in Iraq if we stay or if we leave. I do know that people who supported this invasion have no moral standing to lecture anyone about doing the right thing by the Iraqi people. We invaded their country and turned it into a cauldron of violence that’s gone on now for nearly five years. (But then, Crocker believes, “it isn’t really all that much,” so I guess he believes the hundreds of thousands of dead bodies are a small price to pay.)

But I do know that there are many smart people who believe that the US is making things worse for both the Iraqis and ourselves and that our presence creates more violence. Certainly, their predictions of the future should not be taken any less seriously than these people who have been responsible for an operation which from conception to today is such an all-consuming catastrophe that in a sane world they would be banished from ever having any say in such matters again. In fact, anything but the most humble acknowledgment of fallibility and contrition from these people is completely out of place.

But let’s set aside the moral criminality of the situation and take a clear-eyed look at what a perfectly idiotic thing it was to do on a strategic level. They set this geopolitical horror show in motion when they decided to invade Iraq and destabilize the middle east at a time when there was a very compelling sociological force gaining power throughout the region. It couldn’t have been more stupid for our security, for the stability of the global economy, for the sake of the perception of American power and military effectiveness. The failure is not just what’s happened inside Iraq, although that’s huge. The failure is how it’s scrambled the geopolitical game plan in ways they clearly didn’t anticipate when they were holding court with Chalabi and Makiya and making plans for their personal Monticellos and Mt Vernons in Mesopotamia. People who make mistakes like this are clearly incapable of making the kind of tactical and strategic decisions to succeed at anything. What more do they have to do to prove it?

There will be no solutions — if there even is such a thing at this point — until these incompetent megalomaniacs are out of power. We’re in a holding pattern, nothing more.

Those of us who have been closely observing this train wreck from the beginning know exactly what this escalation was about: it was an effort to keep Iraq from completely falling apart just long enough to get Bush out of office. Prior to the election, a “surge” wasn’t even on the agenda. In fact all we heard about was how the army was on the verge of being broken, (which it is.) Bush and Cheney brushed off the Baker Hamilton Group’s tepid compromises because their driving motive at this point is not to “succeed in Iraq — which they can’t even define since the neocon wet dream of Kumbayaa on the Tigris didn’t pan out — but to save face and (perhaps) preserve the myth of GOP national security strength. That’s what they do. It’s what they’ve always done.

To that end they’ve hired professional propagandists and political operatives to spin tales that keep the media and the congress just enough off balance that they continue to give them the benefit of the doubt. If the presidency changes hands in 2008, as it is likely to do, there will be no more such benefit of the doubt, we know that.

We have watched how these people operate for more than six years now. There’s no mystery about what’s going on. Iraq is a failure in every way and the Bush administration’s only real strategy now is how to make the Democrats pay for it. Period.

(And needless to say, there are still plenty of very important Republicans making a whole lot of money by stealing from the taxpayers. In that one regard, Cheney’s plan has been a huge success.)

For a slightly less optimistic view than that of Crocker and Der Spiegel, check this out.

Fall Follies

by digby

Not that anyone ever seriously thought otherwise, but this is the first time I’ve seen it in print. Remember it when Bush drones on about how he’s just following the General’s recommendations:

Despite Bush’s repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

And though Petraeus and Crocker will present their recommendations on Capitol Hill, legislation passed by Congress leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report’s data.

The good thing is that you can trust the bush administration to do the right thing and tell it to the American people straight. Their track record on that is unassailable.

H/t to bb

Shocker

by digby

And it was so good, too:

In a memo to senior producers this afternoon, FNC’s SVP of programming, Bill Shine announced the network “will not continue the Half Hour News Hour beyond its current 15 episode run.” Shine did leave the door open, however: “we are considering ways to retool the show for future scheduling needs.” The TV news satire show which airs Sunday nights, stars faux anchors Kurt McNally, played by Kurt Long, and Jennifer Lange, played by Jennifer Robertson.

There is only one funny right winger in the world and his name is PJ O’Rourke. And he isn’t really a rightwinger, he’s a misanthropic libertarian.

This is all they’ve got:

They are so incredibly lame that they can’t even get a cigar in the oval office joke right.

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Trends

by digby

I just though you all might like to see this polling memo (pdf) from Democracy Corps. I think it speaks for itself:

Right now, the Democrats enjoy an average lead of 12 points in the generic presidential race (51 to 39 percent) and 9 points in the named congressional ballot (51 to 42 percent). But let us point to some of the trends underneath that make 2008 look like a very big election.

• The Democrats’ lead in both the Presidential and Congressional races is undiminished in the ‘core’ group of the most likely voters. Usually, the Republicans cut some of the margin on Election Day because of turnout patterns, but that is not likely in 2008.

• Education – one of the best predictors of vote over the past decade – is losing its power,with both well-educated and blue collar voters moving to the Democrats. In the Congressional ballot, for example, the high school educated give the Democrat an 11- point lead, dropping to 10 points among those with some high school and 8 points amongthe college educated. In short, the rush to be done with the Republicans is turning America a little classless.

• The ‘opinion elite’ in the country – those with a college education and earning more than$75,000 – are supporting the Democratic presidential candidate by 11 points (52 to 41percent). The elites are apparently fed up with the state of the country under George Bush.

• While the Democratic Presidential candidate is winning the Kerry counties by a two-to one margin, the Republican candidate is only winning the Bush counties by 1 point (46 to 45 percent). The Republican nominee will struggle to come back in the battleground states. Just as important, a lot of Republican incumbents will be running in supposedly ‘red’ districts and states, but find them evenly divided. The Republican Presidential candidate is barely ahead among white rural voters (48 to 41 percent).

Contours of the New Electorate

• The Democratic Presidential candidate is carrying those with family members serving inIraq by almost the same margin as for voters overall, 50 to 43 percent. Democratic Congressional candidates who have been prominently trying to change Iraq policy have an even larger lead, 53 to 42 percent.

• The Democratic Presidential candidate is carrying all Catholics by 18 points and white Catholics by 13 (51 to 38 percent). This would represent a major change in political direction. In fact, the Democrat is running marginally ahead among white Catholics who attend Church every week.

• The big difference in the race is independents: Presidentially, Democrats are ahead by 19 points; Congressionally, by 14 points. It is the crash with independents more than Republican defections that is driving the Republican vote down.

• The Democrats are getting landslide margins with voters under 30; they are even winning whites under 30 by 14 points.

• Instead of losing younger white non-college men by 19 points as in 2004, the Democratic Presidential candidate now is losing them by only 2.

• Union voters have not in recent decades been as solid for the Democrats as now. In fact, Democrats are winning white union households by two-to-one.

• One of the key blocs of ‘swing’ voters is married women. They are breaking marginally for the Democrats this year after swinging strongly for the Republicans in 2004. White married women are breaking even in the Presidential, and Congressionally, the Republican candidate is ahead by only 4 points.

• One of the key blocs of ‘base’ voters for Democrats is unmarried women – who could comprise a quarter of the electorate. The Democrats are winning them by two to one; they are winning white unmarried women by over 20 points.

It’s a mistake to be complacent. A lot can happen in the next year and a whole lot of this comes from the incredibly sour taste in people’s mouths after six years of the Bush administration. (Thanks Turdblossom.)

But you have to be optimistic, at least, that the American people are eager to hear a new story. The question is whether the Democrats can tell it.

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